Lot Details

"Welcome, Welcome-Mao" (2007) is a stunning large-scale oil painting and a major example of the figurative works that have made Chinese Contemporary artist Ren Rong internationally renowned. Mao is depicted close-up and grinning as the central figure standing before a beautiful bright blue sky and surrounded by a sea of flowers which fall before him as well as his ubiquitous ‘incarnation symbol/flower people,’ meant to demonstrate vitality and power of human life, an idea closely related to philosophical values of ancient China as harmony between men and nature. Here Ren deflates the virility, power and legend of Mao, with his surreal and effeminate context demonstrating how art can be used to recontextualize a portrait or for a specific political agenda. This painting measures 78.75 x 59 inches, is unframed and in excellent condition.

Ren Rong was born in 1960 China and is one of the most important Chinese Realist painters working today. Ren received his formal degrees in painting at The Fine Arts Department of Nanjing Art Institute from 1982 to 1986, and also studied at the Düsseldorf National Academy of Art from 1989 to 1992. In 1993, he was granted an art scholarship by Germany's Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of Culture in 1993 and was awarded Welberg City Art Prize in 1994. The next year he established "Ren Rong Modern Art Studio" in Songzhuang, Beijing. In 1996 he was invited by German Bonn Modern Art Gallery for the planning of an exhibition tour themed as "China!–Modern Uygure". He was appointed as Guest Professor of Hamburg Academy of Plastic Arts in 2000 when he also established a Ren Rong Modern Art Studio in Bonn, Germany in 2007. The artist lives between Bonn, Germany and Beijing, China

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